{"title":"Books by Ruth Padel","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780099429159","title":"52 Ways Of Looking At A Poem","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eEver wondered about how to really interpret poetry? Puzzled about metre, rhyming and stanzas? Presented in language thoroughly accessible for all, poet and writer Ruth Padel demystifies poetic style, structure and meaning in this comprehensive anthology of modern poems\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBased on the author’s popular column in The Independent on Sunday, each poem is accompanied by an informative and entertaining explanatory excerpt by Padel. Featuring an assortment of contemporary poets from Carol Ann Duffy to Seamus Heaney, the collection thematically encompasses universal subjects of love, sex, family, death, as well as more obscure matters – for instance, loneliness when listening to the shipping forecast. A poem for each week of the year, Padel’s exploration of the literary form expertly combines technical analysis with imaginative, creative interpretation – sure to make any reader fall in love with the modern verse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e‘She argues away the idea that contemporary poetry is \"difficult\": all it needs is a little work and the rewards are great’ \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201389592754,"sku":"9780099429159","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099429159_6c060c0c-8178-416f-88e0-7b827079d93a.jpg?v=1786011624"},{"product_id":"9781472156396","title":"Daughters of The Labyrinth","description":"\u003cp\u003e'An immersive novel, steeped in the history and folklore of Crete: transporting, historically informative story-telling' \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A moving, superbly written exploration of a family with dark secrets. Crete itself becomes one of the main characters in the story' \u003ci\u003eIrish Times\u003c\/i\u003e, Best Books 2021\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis was my home. This harbour and sea. These golden alleys. But the town I grew up in has disappeared.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBroken by the death of her husband, Ri, a successful international artist living in London, returns to her ancestral home of Crete. The Greek island is known for its ancient myth and mass tourism, but when Ri returns she finds a secret, darker history. As the home she left deals with a looming Brexit, and the home she rediscovered grapples with a refugee crisis, Ri confronts her changing identity. Unearthing stories from her family's past leaves a permanent mark on her understanding of herself, her relationship to her country, and her art. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLyrical, unsettling and evocative, \u003ci\u003eDaughters of the Labyrinth\u003c\/i\u003e explores the power of buried memory and the grip of the past on the present, and questions how well we can ever know our own family.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e'\u003ci\u003eDaughters of the Labyrinth\u003c\/i\u003e is a novel about a daughter's passionate quest for the truth about what happened to her parents in Crete during the German occupation. It is also a sumptuous and sensuous evocation of Crete itself, its landscape and culture. Ruth Padel's brings a poet's eye to this world of great physical beauty and gnarled legacy' Colm Tóibín\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57688251203957,"sku":"9781472156389","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":43204410540210,"sku":"9781472156396","price":18.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781472156389.jpg?v=1792686213"},{"product_id":"9781529112788","title":"We Are All From Somewhere Else","description":"\u003cb\u003e*First published as \u003ci\u003eThe Mara Crossing\u003c\/i\u003e, now with new and updated material*\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A prodigy, a book of wonders.  Wonder, pity and terror, the searing section of voices in transit coercing compassion - and beyond that, empathy' \u003ci\u003eIndependent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eHome is where you start from, but where is a swallow's real home? And what does 'native' mean if the English oak is an immigrant from Spain?\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn ninety richly varied poems and illuminating prose interludes, Ruth Padel weaves science, myth, wild nature and human history to conjure a world created and sustained by migration - from the millennia-old journeys of cells, trees, birds and beasts to Geese battle raging winds over Mount Everest, lemurs skim precipices in Madagascar and wildebeest, at the climax of their epic trek from Tanzania, braving a river filled with the largest crocodiles in Africa. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHuman migration has shaped civilisation but today is one of the greatest challenges the world faces. In a series of incisive portraits, Padel turns to the struggles of human displacement - the Flight into Egypt, John James Audubon emigrating to America (feeding migrant birds en route), migrant workers in Mumbai and refugees labouring over a drastically changing planet - to show how the purpose of migration, for both humans and animals, is survival.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303361163637,"sku":"9781529112788","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529112788_506263c3-8712-4436-9496-1a6fb0c966ff.jpg?v=1786022676"},{"product_id":"9781784742515","title":"Beethoven Variations","description":"\u003cb\u003e“Padel’s imagery and imagination took me deeper into Beethoven than many biographies I’ve read.” —\u003cb\u003eAnthony Tommasini, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA fascinating poetic journey into the mind and heart of a musical genius, from the author of the celebrated \u003ci\u003eDarwin: A Life in Poems\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRuth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of the world's greatest composers. She uncovers the man behind the music, charting his private thoughts and feelings through letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and the conversation books he used as his hearing declined. She gives us Beethoven as a battered four-year-old, weeping at the clavier; the young virtuoso pianist agonized by his encroaching deafness; the passionate, heartbroken lover; the clumsy eccentric making coffee with exactly sixty beans. Padel's quest takes her into the heart of Europe and back to her own musical childhood: Her great-grandfather, who studied in Leipzig with a pupil of Beethoven's, became a concert pianist before migrating to Britain; her parents met making music; and Padel grew up playing the viola, Beethoven's instrument as a child. Her book is a poet and string player's intimate connection across the centuries with an artist who, though increasingly isolated, ended even his most harrowing works on a note of hope.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304712679797,"sku":"9781784742515","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784742515_d8c92f31-e0ba-48a9-9995-bcca7e3174cf.jpg?v=1786025613"},{"product_id":"9781784741075","title":"Emerald","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn elegy to a lost mother, Emerald is the moving new collection from prize-winning poet Ruth Padel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e‘Here in deep earth, the black\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eblossom of mourning still sifting within me\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eI remembered that emerald was my birthstone \u003c\/i\u003e…’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePrize-winning poet Ruth Padel’s heartfelt new collection is a grief observed: an elegy for her mother on her death at the age of ninety-seven.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eExploring the riches of emerald lore, Padel follows the glint of green – ‘green for awakening \/ for bringing life back from the dead’ – from memories of her mother, a naturalist, to the black honeycomb of a Colombian emerald mine and sunset-pink of the Emerald City, Jaipur. Beneath everything shines the jewel itself, ‘the only stone in which the flaws are prized’. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeautifully carved and cadenced, \u003ci\u003eEmerald\u003c\/i\u003e is a moving chronicle of value and loss, and a celebration of all that is precious in the life that remains.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305222517109,"sku":"9781784741075","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784741075_b00061e2-dc21-4f8b-9e1b-df35b6d18b0b.jpg?v=1786025605"},{"product_id":"9781784745806","title":"Girl","description":"\u003cb\u003eA fresh and questioning look at girlhood and its icons, unravelling the millennia of myth woven around girls.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'A sensual exploration of two female archetypes' \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'One of our most gifted poets ... This is tender and exquisite poetry' Mona Arshi, author of \u003ci\u003eSmall Hands\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eGirl\u003c\/i\u003e, Ruth Padel presents a triptych of interlocking sequences. A moving retelling of the Christian story transforms the Virgin Mary into a girl in a Primark T-shirt, facing a life shaped by divine will. Unearthed from the Cretan labyrinth, a prehistoric Snake Goddess is reshaped at the hands of a male archaeologist.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBetween these evocative figures, myth turns personal. Delicately crafted lyrics, sometimes taking adventurous shapes, explore snapshots from the poet’s own life blended with archetypes from India, European fairy tale, ancient Greece and Urban Dictionary: girl as soul, girl as creative energy, girl as the sacred power of nature, vulnerable but unstoppable. ‘Listening to the snowmelt \/ of the patriarchy’, \u003ci\u003eGirl \u003c\/i\u003eis an urgent, revelatory work for today.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e**A Poetry Book Society Special Commendation**\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Dazzling' Kim Moore, author of \u003ci\u003eAll the Men I Never Married\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Beautiful' Linda Gregerson, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Selvedge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305226776949,"sku":"9781784745806","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784745806_8a897f01-8145-49ab-9b93-bce6a906628a.jpg?v=1786025692"},{"product_id":"poem-and-the-journey","title":"The Poem and the Journey","description":"Prize-winning poet Ruth Padel is renowned as a guide to understanding today's poetry. Her much-loved \u003ci\u003e52 Ways of Looking at a Poem\u003c\/i\u003e introduced the contemporary poetry scene and discussed individual poems. Her new book, invaluable for all who want to write as well as read poems, reveals the journey of thought, language and music within sixty more poems and also shows how poems fortify us on the journey of our lives, in a collection of essays written in elegant, accessible prose.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466709868917,"sku":"9780099492948","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099492948.jpg?v=1785654770"},{"product_id":"darwin","title":"Darwin","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn these extraordinary poems, using multiple viewpoints - from Darwin himself, to his beloved wife Emma, and even, at one point, the orangutang at London Zoo - Ruth Padel illuminates the development of Darwin's thought, the drama of the discovery of evolution, and the fluctuating emotions of Darwin the husband, the naturalist and the tender father, in a powerful tribute to her famous ancestor.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eShortlisted for the 2009 Costa Poetry Award.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466830553461,"sku":"9780099547051","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099547051.jpg?v=1785654904"},{"product_id":"soho-leopard","title":"The Soho Leopard","description":"\u003cp\u003eBeautiful, disturbing and a pleasure to read, Ruth Padel's new poems are her most ambitious yet, adding animal legend and zoological science to her glitteringly imaginative canvas. With her gift for bringing together experiences and tones of voice that normally stay far apart, she sweeps us from Dulwich Pizza Hut to ancient Siberia, King's Cross to nineteenth-century Burma. We meet Socrates, urban foxes, Louisiana alligators and the endangered Amur leopard in poems resonating with sensuous delight in nature, but also with history and loss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFinally, a Chinese painter searches for tigers in a forest doomed to the sawmill while the minister who sold it scoffs an aphrodisiac bowl of tiger-penis soup.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHallucinatory and lyrical, passionately musical, seething with life, \u003ci\u003eThe Soho Leopard\u003c\/i\u003e explores our human need for wildness- and also for stories, wherever we find them. A wonderfully ferocious new collection from one of our most exciting poets.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481687433589,"sku":"9780701176211","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780701176211.jpg?v=1786089977"},{"product_id":"learning-to-make-an-oud-in-nazareth","title":"Learning to Make an Oud in Nazareth","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Making is our defence against the dark...'\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThrough images of conflict and craftsmanship, Ruth Padel’s powerful new poems address the Middle East, tracing a quest for harmony in the midst of destruction\u003c\/b\u003e. An oud, the central instrument of Middle Eastern music , is made and broken. An ancient synagogue survives attacks, a Palestinian boy in a West Bank refugee camp learns capoeira, and a guide shows us Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity during a siege. At the heart of the book are Christ’s last words from the Cross.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUniting this moving collection is the common ground shared by Judaism, Christianity and Islam: a vision of human life as pilgrimage and struggle but also as music and making. With care and empathy, Ruth Padel suggests how rifts in the Holy Land speak to conflict in our own hearts. 'We identify. Some chasm \/ through the centre must be in and of us all.'\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481689792885,"sku":"9780701188160","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780701188160.jpg?v=1786089981"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-ruth-padel.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}